Building audits are conducted in many commercial buildings to identify opportunities to reduce energy costs and improve building operation. Because audits require significant effort by building engineers, they are usually only affordable for larger commercial buildings. “No-touch” building audit tools have thus been developed to identify potential savings based on a simplified analysis of building energy consumption patterns via high-level energy data such as monthly utility bills. This paper presents a comprehensive and standardized methodology to evaluate the accuracy of no-touch audit tools in detecting and diagnosing building energy problems and quantifying potential energy savings. The test suite is based on output data from a well-characterized set of building energy models, and the methodology is illustrated by applying it to a representative no-touch building audit tool. Results show that the tool estimates building energy end uses with reasonable accuracy but is less accurate in identifying probably causes of high energy.

在许多商业建筑中都进行了建筑审计，以发现降低能源成本和改善建筑运营的机会。由于审计需要建筑工程师付出巨大的努力，因此通常只有大型商业建筑才能负担得起。因此，已经开发了“非接触式”建筑审核工具，以通过高级能源数据（例如每月水电费账单）对建筑能耗模式进行简化分析，来识别潜在的节约。本文提出了一种全面，标准化的方法，以评估非接触式审计工具在检测和诊断建筑物能源问题以及量化潜在节能方面的准确性。该测试套件基于一组功能完备的建筑能源模型的输出数据，并将该方法应用于有代表性的非接触式建筑审核工具进行说明。结果表明，该工具以合理的准确性估算建筑物的能源最终用途，但在确定可能的高能耗原因时准确性较低。